Rambus Scores Major Win in Legal Battle against Nvidia
Rambus Scores Major Win in Legal Battle against Nvidia
Posted 07/27/2010 at 3:42pm
| by Pulkit Chandna
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The US International Trade Commission has issued a notice of final determination in the patent infringement action brought by Rambus against Nvidia and other respondents, the technology licensing company, often accused of being a patent troll, announced in a press release. The ITC found Nvidia and some of its customers (co-respondents in the case) guilty of infringing three Rambus patents, affirming an earlier decision by an ITC administrative law judge, albeit with some modification.
The ITC has notified Rambus of its intent to issue a Limited Exclusion Order prohibiting the importation of infringing products into the United States; the list includes Nvidia’s GeForce, Quadro, nForce, Tesla and Tegra product families. The sale of infringing products previously imported by the respondents will also be banned.
However, the respondents can continue to import and sell the affected products during a 60-day Presidential review period by posting a bond equaling “2.65% of the entered value of the subject imports.” According to a Bloomberg report, Nvidia will be taking advantage of a licensing arrangement Rambus reached with the European Commission “to continue our business under the terms of that license and prevent the enforcement of any exclusion order.” Last year, Rambus settled an antitrust case in Europe by agreeing to cap memory chip royalties at 40 cents per unit.
"We are extremely pleased with the ITC's decision to issue a Limited Exclusion Order, signaling the strength of our innovation efforts beyond the Farmwald-Horowitz patents of our founders. The value of our patented inventions has been recognized by our current licensees, and we will continue our efforts to license others,” said Thomas Lavelle, senior vice president and general counsel at Rambus.
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Thursday
July 27, 2010 at 7:34pm
The fact that Mr. Lavelle is both Senior VP and General counsel (their top laywer) tells you all you need to know about Rambus. Where most tech companies have talented businessmen or people who were instrumental in founding the company running the show, Rambus has a lawyer as VP.
I still can't believe that the panel only ruled two of Rambus's patents invalid. How in the world can a company head an industry wide standards group, co-develope a ton of standards, then turn around and lay claim via the patent system to all of the jointly created ideas? No wonder people don't want to deal with this company.
big_montana
July 28, 2010 at 5:25am
No different than what Intel did to AMD and Cyrix back in the '90s. They co-developed the MMX multimedia extensions together, than Intle patented them and turned around and sued both AMD and Cyrix to prevent them from usinf the MMX extensions in the processors and marketing. Both AMD and Cyrix lost the case and ended up having to license the technology from Intel, thoug they were co-devleopers of it. All that seems to matter to the courts today is who patents it first.
BAMT
July 27, 2010 at 6:28pm
Does this mean that I need to smuggle to get good computer parts now?
Rambus is more than accused of being a troll; it is a troll. It makes its profits mostly from doing this kind of crap. (See: Wikipedia)
QUINTIX256
July 27, 2010 at 5:32pm
When I get a license of Windows, I get a full fledged operation system. When AMD licences the x86 instruction set from Intel, they get rough equal access to the CPU market and completely equal compatibility with all x86 software.
Rambus's website features some interesting developments and boastings of "gigabits per second per miliwatt", so not all of the royalties are going to lawyer's paychecks, but when a company like nVidia is forced to pay royalties to Rambus and continue paying for them, what on earth does nVidia get in return? Do they get to co-develop new memory interfaces to the benefit of consumers, or just the right to continue using what they have allegedly stole?
No doubt nVidia has put as much if not more money and research into memory interfaces than Rambus (in addition to licensing GDDR3/5 from ATI), so it is not like they are outsourcing work here. Rambus is asking nVidia to pay for the same work twice.
In the same vein, has any major electonics company, outside of Intel and their little disaster and some game console companies, licensed what is alleged to be Rambus's (and only Rambus's) IP voluntarily?
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